Memories of the Future | Gunda-Werner-Institut

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Paula Petričević

By Paula Petričević (ANIMA – Centre for Women- and Peace-education).

„The emancipatory core of this holiday, repressed and buried under bouquets and kitsch presents, is contemporaneously interpreted as anachronic and idealistic. This jubilee year of marking International Women’s Day and women solidarity within Montenegrin context sharpens a painful paradox lived by women wedged between socrealistic past and democratic future in, as it seems, intransient transitional present.“

Although misted in with double symbolic overmarking oscillating between the iconography of Mother’s and Valentine’s Day, a hundred years long and rather colourful history of March 8 is unambiguously political. The emancipatory core of this holiday, repressed and buried under bouquets and kitsch presents, is contemporaneously interpreted as anachronic and idealistic. This jubilee year of marking International Women’s Day and women solidarity within Montenegrin context sharpens a painful paradox lived by women wedged between socrealistic past and democratic future in, as it seems, intransient transitional present. The images that we recollect and that we expect are overlapping, composing an almost elusive portrait of our chimerical moment.

One of them brings a disturbing physiognomy of the situation which befalls female workers at chain stores after they are sold to a foreign company. Up to a few months ago these women worked in conditions that could be defined as almost typical for our labour market – they were registered for minimal wage while receiving the remaining cash wage „under the table“, they worked overtime without adequate compensation and surpassing legal limits, without exercising the right of vacation and one free day during a week, etc. After the takeover, the rules changed. Their wages officially increased, they worked in shifts within legal limits, they exercised the right of vacation and free days. Nonetheless, while before they appeared to be exhausted and overworked women, now they look furious and frustrated. How come?

The fact is that they were forced to literally pay the price of exercising elementary labour rights, so although their wages increased and their rights are to a greater extent protected, they bring home less money. This situation best reflects the burning question on local women – can we afford ourselves rights? Will we rather accept humiliating and exploitative labour relations or even grater poverty while exercising few labour rights? This brutal reality does not grant an easy orientation on one side. The system, which in a transitional giant slalom devastated the country, enriched few individuals, made pointless institutions turning them into ridiculous fig leaves and completely demolished trust in the legal system reform, is being renewed and improved through just patched pockets of the widest population. On the other side, if one had to chose, many would opt for present status-quo, since the same and practically unaltered system over the last few decades, despite its tepid legalistic rhetoric, convinced us that principles do not pay off and that law is obeyed only by the weak lacking other options, i.e. the ones who cannot afford themselves a different choice. And although it is clear that the rule of law must not have an alternative, it is hypocritical to moralise over forced choice of a larger proportion of employees who continue to consent to semi-legal, therefore illegal labour relations, especially having in mind that big monopolies still remain intact.

In such context perhaps it is more constructive to reformulate previous questions and consider the ways in which the main pressure of reforms can be redirected on stronger links in our social chain, the ways which do not comprise the choice between human dignity and assurance of bare existence. Perhaps. Or perhaps these reformulations make once again invisible the untenability of the above dilemma – can we afford ourselves rights? Does the very raising of this question means that we do not want them or at least not hard enough?

Precisely that phrase represents one of the most common reactions to the criticism from women’s organisations at the performance of governmental institutions on all levels – „women do not want their rights“ – and thus, among other things, our parliament is „most masculine“ in the region (only 11% of MPs are women). Nevertheless, the matter is, as it seems, much more complicated – social situation is such that we are in no position to exercise the rights without exposing ourselves to many other toils and deprivations. Must mostly women and other underprivileged and marginalised groups be the ones who will pay the highest price of transition?

Thirty and more years ago the marking of March 8 in Montenegro was still fresh in memories of the secured women’s rights. The necessity for further and deeper emancipation was suppressed by wars on the territory of former Yugoslavia, but also by the nontransparent transition which served too often as a mask for plain robbery. With gradual commercialisation of this date and uncritical regard towards the past which is ever more disregarded and superficially treated, the memories of the future which could have happen are barely surviving. The centenary of March 8 is a good time to make once more clear, visible and important the essence of the political demands of women.

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